


The Ghost Vigilante

by crystalemi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Alternative Universe - FBI, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bath Sex, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Inspired by Supernatural (TV), Inspired by Teen Wolf (TV), It is mentioned at some point, It's a Bad Case, It's the supernatural FBI, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Paranormal Investigative Agency, Past Character Death, References to Knotting, Starvation, Witch!Keith, shiro is something, the case is a bit gory, werewolf!lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-06-18 21:26:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15495021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalemi/pseuds/crystalemi
Summary: “So, who’s your favourite boyfriend, uh?” Lance taunts with a playful smirk and walks around the desk to sit on him. Once he’s comfortable in Shiro’s lap, he cheekily adds: “What did your other boyfriend get you on this fine morning, uh?”Shiro is going to reprimand Lance, when Keith annoyed voice cuts through from behind Lance’s back: “A case, Lance.”His lapful of boyfriend goes very still, and sniffs hauntingly.





	1. The Pink Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I've started writing this on Lance's Birthday, so happy belated birthday~
> 
> The plot might not be anything new, but I still tried to give it my personal twist. It could become a series with a deeper plot, but for now it's something lighthearted - well, considering there's murder and domestic violence involved in the case.
> 
> Also I don't have a beta so every mistake you spot is my shame.

“Good morning, dear!” Lance chirps waltzing in. He’s fresh and well-rested, and through the general annoyance of an utterly fruitless night shift, Shiro is quite happy to see him.

“I got you breakfast,” Lance adds, showing the paper bag and the three cups of coffee in his other hand.

Shiro gets up to kiss him soundly on his smug grin, just as Lance is dumping everything between them on his desk.

Lance lets himself be kissed, practically melts in the kiss – and Shiro is aware that it’s their workspace and they decided to keep it professional there, but he’s just too tired to really care.

“So, who’s your favourite boyfriend, uh?” Lance taunts with a playful smirk and walks around the desk to sit on him. Once he’s comfortable on Shiro’s lap, he cheekily adds: “What did your other boyfriend get you on this fine morning, uh?”

Shiro is going to reprimand Lance, when Keith annoyed voice cuts through from behind Lance’s back: “A case, Lance.”

His lapful of boyfriend goes very still, and sniffs hauntingly.

 _So this is one of those days_ , Shiro guesses. His boyfriends have days when they’re just annoyed by each other’s very existence. Once upon a time, Shiro would’ve swore it was because of their species not being exactly the best combination together, but then again time has taught him that it’s just a Keith and Lance thing. It’s possibly one of the way they show each other they care, as they always have a trigger to their moods.

He wonders what happened between yesterday night and this morning to piss off Lance, although at the same time it’s easy for Keith to annoy him.

He could have refused a bath together, or they might have both been in the same mood for sex and got annoyed at having to relent to a different position, or either of them could’ve said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Or it could be close to the full moon – Shiro realises as Lance burrows closer to him, straight up against his chest and surreptitiously tries to hug himself with Shiro’s arms. That time of the month in which Lance needs more attention and Keith is stressed by the workload, and Shiro has to juggle very carefully between making Lance feel irreplaceable and loved, and helping Keith keeping the town standing and finding time for his many rituals.

Shiro loves his boyfriends, but sometimes it feels like having two hot-headed girlfriends pregnant at the same time.

He realises he’s spacing out when the thin yellow folder hits his desk next to the paper bag. Keith doesn’t seems to be inclined towards explaining, since he dives for the paper bag and starts looking for his own breakfast. From the bag wafts out the thick scent of warm cinnamon, which proves Shiro must have been right about the full moon, since Lance wouldn’t get Keith’s favourite unless he wanted to trick him into showing appreciation.

Keith moans around his first bite, and Shiro deems it the perfect time to move around Lance and get to his own bakery good. He’s not exactly worried that Keith’s a stress eater – but he his and it’s the most stressful time of the month, so. Better safe than sorry, he tells himself while he digs for his _pain au chocolat_.

He gets it out and leans back, Lance fluidly moving with him. He offers him a bite, but Lance shakes his head and stands up. He grabs his coffee – there’s a smiley on it and Shiro bets there’s a number on the bottom of it. He’ll learn soon, since it must be almost empty by the way Lance is drinking.

As he bites his _pain au chocolat_ with gusto, he watches his boyfriends interact in subtle ways. Lance is clearly ill at ease in his own skin, this restless energy quite visible in the way he fidgets around and tries to conceal it at the same time, by leaning in front of Keith to get to the case folder and distractedly going through it too fast to be reading any of it. Keith leans unconsciously towards Lance, possibly feeling the power just under his skin, a siren call for such a chaotic witch.

Shiro can see them attracting and repelling each other in a dance they’ve always denied. As he also sees Lance’s face grow confused with every page he turns, he doesn’t have to be a fortune teller to foresee quite a stress filled full moon.

“These are all domestic violence reports, followed by missing reports, followed by homicide reports _of different people_ ,” Lance waves the folder in front of Keith, who just shrugs and tries to answer around a mouthful. There’s sticky white sugar glaze all around his lips and even some on the tip of his nose.

Lance waits for him to finish munching with a look of airily disgust, but says nothing – which Shiro counts as a good omen.

“It’s a pattern. No one noticed before, but six neighbours call the police for a domestic and four women go denounce it themselves. One week later, all ten women disappear in thin air. Ten days after, their abusers die. Brutally.”

“Good riddance,” Lance spits out and Keith nods.

“I still don’t understand how this falls under our division?” Shiro wonders aloud, and Keith this time swallows first.

“Witness states he saw a lady in white murder the last one.” That would be enough, Shiro concedes. “She left the witness alive too and just disappeared, if that doesn’t qualify as supernatural weird, I don’t know what does.” Keith finishes, before looking forlornly at his last bite of cinnamon roll held between index and middle finger.

“Whatever, Shiro, it’s clock-off. The couch’s waiting for your lovely butt. Beer’s in the fridge.” Lance says, taking away the case folder and going to his own desk to properly read through it.

“I wouldn’t mind working on this,” Shiro tells Keith, who shakes his head. He’s licking glaze from his finger and it’s halfway between disgusting and adorable.

“Can’t,” he admits, “Iverson chewed me out when he found out how much extra you worked last month for the wendigo,” he grabs his coffee and takes a sip. “Just go home, build a den to Lance somewhere away from the office and make him dinner. He’s been driving me nuts.” He complains sullenly. Shiro just smiles and gets his coat off the back of the chair.

“He always drives you nuts,” he kisses the corner of his mouth and it tastes obnoxiously of cinnamon and sugar glaze. Keith sighs, and Shiro takes the opportunity to kiss the tip of his nose, which scrunches up in disdain.

“Just try and be patient, it’s not his fault.”

Keith huffs and plants a solid kiss on his lips and sends him off. He goes back to his office looking amused.

“Just leave it, I’ll do it later,” Lance tells him as he starts gathering up the rubbish from breakfast. “It’s no big, and I’ll have an excuse to stretch my legs.”

“Okay, just try to get through the day, I’ll make sure you have a nice bubble bath when you’re back.”

Lance smiles happy to have something to look forward to.

“Just make sure to have yourself in it too, then,” Lance says with a flirtatious look.

Now Shiro has something to look forward to, too.

  * * -



“I ask the questions, you look around,” Keith says, his anxiety spiking up and smelling like sewage to Lance’s delicate nose.

“Yeah, no,” he snaps, “how about you check around the place and I do the asking.”

“What?” Keith barks out – Lance his never going to ever stop dog-joke-and-references his way through life – and then adds, a spice of uncertain hope spiking in his cocktail of nerves and anxiety: “I’m the boss, I’m supposed to be the one talking.”

“And you’re shit at that, so let the pros do the talking and do what you’re good at, looking for things out of place,” Lance decides and rings the bell. Truth be told, they both suck at talking. Shiro’s the one to always do the talking – before because he was their boss, and now because, case in point, they both suck at it.

He hears hurried steps come down a staircase, the kind of hurry that speaks of must-get-the-door, instead of the must-get-out-from-the-back-door, so lance discretely pokes Keith in the ribs so that he’ll be ready too. He gets himself a glare for all his troubles.

The man – big feet, smells of sweat and fear – looks out the spyhole first, and then opens the door tentatively.

“P.I.A., agent Kogane and Agent McClain,” Keith introduces them, and the man visibly relaxes and opens the door wide for them.

“I told them I wasn’t crazy!” The man says as a welcome, and Lance can’t really blame him. The guy saw a woman, wearing a wedding dress, murder a man and then vanish into thin air. It’s not something the Police would take kindly to.

That’s why they’re there, though.

“Mr. Steven Castronovo?” Keith pronounces weirdly and the man appears confused for a moment.

“It’s – never mind, yes that’s me.” The man shrugs with the nonchalance of a man that had spent quite a few years in his life trying to get people to pronounce his name correctly and gave up at some point.

He shows them a tidy suburban living room with a couch and a loveseat, and he sits in the latter. They both sit awkwardly on the couch, maintaining a respectful distance between them.

“I’ll tell you what I told the police,” Castronovo starts unprompted, and Lance already likes him. It’ll make it quick, hopefully. “I was minding my own business when I heard Donovan shout at someone. Marigold went missing, right, but I just had enough.” He says, his anger smells of thunderstorm, but it doesn’t do him any good.

“You see this neighbourhood, right, we’re all families! We have children, and what should I tell my three year old son when he hears a man beating his wife every other day?” Lance can’t imagine having such a conversation with his six years old nephew, and their neighbourhood growing up wasn’t as good.

“So I guess I decided to do something, but I walk down to the next house, and he starts screaming like he’s being gutted,” he stops, looks at the window and one hand finds the opposite wrist. He’s thunderstorm and something spicy. _Prey_ , Lance’s brain supply, which the part of him that thinks and feels more like a human translates in _fear_. The man’s heartbeat has gone easily with all his emotion thus far, but oddly, it skips a bit.

“Well, I got there and a lady, not Marigold, I’d recognise her, is standing over him. Blood everywhere on the walls, a massacre,” Castronovo continues, possibly recalling everything clearly, as his scent sours with the hopelessness of a prey stuck in a bad spot.

“She looks me in the eye, right in my eyes, and then… _shimmers_ out of existence.” He finishes. Lance imagines a woman turning into glitters in an Infinity War finale effect, and struggles not to laugh. He only manages because he can smell frustration rolling out of Keith in waves.

For a few seconds no one says anything, and Lance belatedly remembers he’s the one doing the talking, so he goes ahead and asks before Keith snaps: “What was she wearing, Mr. Castronovo?”

“Wedding dress, I think, but not those that are on those reality shows, you know? An old one, probably my wife would know more.”

“It’s quite enough, actually. Do you happen to remember how old your neighbours were?”

Lance guesses they should ask the basic questions before getting to the gore details, especially since he needs to establish a base line for truth telling if he wants to catch any lie – and sure the man’s been confusing.

“Pretty old, but not as old as they looked. My wife believes Marigold’s a witch, but I’d say she’s just a very skilled girl with plants. She once helped us with my first son’s anxiety. She gave him some awful tasting tea and it worked wonders, now he’s in law school!”

There’s this mystical moment in which Lance turns towards Keith just as Keith is turning to him and they can stare in each other’s awkward and dumbfounded eyes. Keith looks also close to snapping at the insignificance of the conversation, so Lance discretely nods towards the door. Keith excuses himself for the bathroom – towards which Castronovo’s happy to direct him from his loveseat.

“So, would you say they were in their sixties? Fifties?” Lance continues while Keith is out of earshot. He’s got no clue what Keith might look for, since the guy comes out genuine from both their conversation and his body language and scent. He’s a bit of a busybody, but Lance would bet everyone on the street is just as nosy.

“Sixties, but Donovan looked worse for wear. Alcohol doesn’t do anyone any good, and he sure liked his bottles. Always drunk, and shouting at his wife, I can’t believe she only decided to runaway now.”

That plants a red flag in Lance’s trained detective brain. There’s no uncertainty in the man, not even the tiniest bit of a scent related to doubt. The man one hundred percent believes what he’s just said. Which is weird, because Marigold had been reported missing by her brother, not her husband. That mostly suggested homicide, not running away. And a woman her age? After twenty-five years of failed marriage? Plausible, for certain, but unlikely.

“Runaway?” he asks, and Castronovo nods.

“Yes, well, where is she now? She run away.” Still no doubt, it irks Lance. He hopes pressuring the man won’t push him to resist their digging. They need all the information they can get from him, and this could actually be _good_.

“Why are you so sure, Mr. Castronovo?” He wonders, and Keith appears on the doorway of the living room, bangs messed up and lightly wet, so maybe he really just needed a break.

“Well, because she took her flowers, of course!”

Castronovo looks at him and then at Keith and back at him, like he doesn’t understand how they’re not following his mental processing and is also starting to believe them a couple of dumb idiots.

“Flowers?” Keith eventually asks, with scepticism. He’s annoyed again.

“Yes, she had these pink flowers she loved, my wife always raved about it, _always_. And then I was in her house and the pot is gone, I asked the police and they said there was no pink flowers when they went there for the missing report’s investigation. Of course she’d bring that with her, it reminded her of her mother!” He seems to be embarrassed by the amount of information and adds, “she told my wife once.”

Lance sighs, wondering if they’re going to get anything else at all from him. He tries anyway.

“Okay, then, can you tell us about the woman in white?” Castronovo shakes his head, he repeats what he already told them at first and shrugs.

“What about her eyes?” Keith asks and Castronovo’s heart _finally_ skips a bit.

“I didn’t see them really, okay, and it might sound crazy but,” it skips another beat and a foul smell of rotting slowly permeats the pause. Lance is trying not to gag when eventually Castronovo admits: “But they looked completely yellow in the moonlight”

Keith shifts in place and Lance carefully doesn’t breathe with his nose or deeply. Just steady and quick, his eyes threatening to water.

“Well, thanks, for now, for your cooperation,” Lance says eventually, getting up. They follow the man to the door, and once it’s open again, Lance can finally breathe and smell the thick scent of herbs and flowers. He picks up a few dangerous too and makes a note to pick up some for Keith.

“Yeah we, me and my wife I mean, we’re both here,” he offers with a pained smile, “We all love Marigold, even though we didn’t do her right,” he admits and there’s genuine pain mixing up with shame in his scent. Lance nods and takes a step back, putting as much space between himself and the inhuman terror the man has felt.

 

“Well, that went well,” He mutters as they step up the doorstep of the only house surrounded by police tape.

“Sure wasn’t a waste of time,” Keith replies while donning latex gloves and those shoe covers they both hates – for mostly different reason, but Lance knows he’s the fashionable one of the triad. Although to be honest Shiro could go out wearing a rubbish bag and Lance still would have to fight off people interested in him.

“Yeah, we do know someone else with yellow eyes, don’t we?”

Keith doesn’t answer, not even a glare, but that’s fine, it was after all a rhetorical question. Lance wonders distractedly what Shiro must be doing at that time of day. He hopes he’s not watching reruns of CSI because after this crime scene he doesn’t want to know anything more about blood and guts decorating walls.

“I know I slept through biology 101 but I honestly didn’t know about most of what I’m looking at right now,” he says conversationally and Keith just rolls his eyes to the ceiling – uh, bad idea Keith, is that a kidney?

“Thank the moon it’s not you,” he mutters, and proceeds to look in the rest of the house.

Lance tries to take in a breath – it’s not kidney, because it doesn’t smell of rotting gore, only of stale blood.

“So what are you?” he asks to the darker piece of unknown stuck to the ceiling.

Looking around reveals a chair, and apparently that’s enough for him to reach whatever it is. Turns out it’s not stuck at all, just levitating – and well, stuck to the ceiling because it can’t physically fluctuate any higher. And It’s a flower drenched in blood.

Lance would bet his middle spot in the bed that under all that brown blood, the flower is pink.

  * * -



“It’s a _rhododendron indicum_ , possibly a satsuki azalea, not sure about the exact species, but it’s from a bonsai.” Coran tells them excited, while carefully handling the flower they brought back.

“It’s native of Japan, I don’t know much else, unfortunately,” he adds, and Keith is already impressed, if he has to be honest with himself. He’s never been all that close to nature, if not for what’s strictly necessary to practice his magic. His elements are fire and death, and although he owns quite a collection of lethal and dangerous plants, he just never quite cared enough to learn about most herbs that were not strictly necessary to him, or to take care of his boyfriends.

“And it is, in fact, pink, Lance.” Coran finishes, putting it back in the evidence bag. Lance shots him a smug grin and Keith ignores him, even going as far as resisting rolling his eyes not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

Instead, he takes back the little transparent bag and looks at his bloody content. They had to scratch a petal clean and almost ruined the evidence, but eventually Coran had been able to identify it as precisely as possible, given the circumstances.

The blood samples had already been handed to Coran’s intern – a young human girl that could match the man on his proverbial enthusiasm. Keith isn’t sure who chose her, but he can’t help think of it like a very sweet joke on the whole department.

They sit around waiting for some preliminary result, Lance catching up with Coran while poking at new equipment and asking questions, while Keith is happy to stand against the wall and make sure Lance doesn’t do anything stupid.

He also appreciates having time to just enjoy his boyfriend’s antics, his athletic body that hides behind thin long muscles the strength of ten men, his adorable expression, the toned butt and strong legs.

Lance is cute and adorable and somehow sexy in a carefully constructed way. Shiro effortlessly looks like sex on legs, while Lance is crafted through trial and error, fake smiles and dorky finger guns – and yet he’s somehow charming in his own way.

Keith finds himself itching for the end of their shift. He can’t wait to be home, in their bed, so that he can remind Lance just how much he cherishes him. He’s well aware that underneath his assholery, for the few few exceptions he loves he would do anything. Whatever it takes to make sure they’re healthy and happy. There’s no price he wouldn’t pay for them – and the fact that there are people out in the world mistreating those they claim to love… Undiluted rage boils just under his skin.

“Blood belongs to the victim,” Coran snaps him out of the dark place he’s slipped in. Lance is standing next to him, carefully avoiding Keith’s eyes.

It always surprises Keith how Lance’s wolf side sees in him a leader just as he does with Shiro. Things have really changed from their first encounter.

“Anything else?” He wonders aloud, leaving the wall and stepping up to Lance. A hand on the small of his back is enough to relax his whole stance.

“Not at all, nothing new we didn’t already know, boys,” Coran concludes, snapping off his gloves.

“See you tonight, then,” Lance says and waves his hand goodbye, as they head to the swinging doors of the lab.

“What’s tonight?” Keith asks him and he just shrugs, hands buried in his jeans back pockets.

“No clue, Coran said Shiro’ll tell us.”

“We weren’t supposed to know?” Keith considers the possibilities. They could team up and play dumb and difficult with Shiro. That’s always fun. Or they could see how far they could take a staged argument on where to spend the evening before he caved and gave up the surprise. For some reason Keith doesn’t feel like arguing with Lance, even just for kicks.

“Nah, he was telling me about his uncle new architectural feature,” Lance grins, and Keith can’t help the smile that sneaks on his face and apparently makes Lance’s day.

They don’t say nothing else until they reach their department floor, and if Keith’s hand has usurped Lance’s own in his back pocket neither of them seem to mind.

Lance does yelp in the elevator when Keith squeezes, though.


	2. Something has got to give

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there's a lot of relationship dealings and not much gets solved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here comes the warning for the spoiler character you see in the tags. They're just mentioned because of past relationships, so I hope it's not bad.  
> Also it is still Monday here so I'm not exactly late, right?

The rest of the day they spend going through all the similar cases, which happens to be a waste of time. By the time they clock off Lance’s had enough for a lifetime of gore pictures and missing reports that lead to absolutely no breakthrough whatsoever.

They commute together for once and spend the fifteen minutes of underground pressed together in the varied crowd of humans and creatures. It’s extenuating for both of them, but they endure it so they don’t have to ruin their day waiting in traffic during rush hour.

Their shared flat is on night mode, with lights dimmed and the wall of glass darkened. There’s a trail of candles – burgundy ones that smell obnoxiously of cinnamon and chocolate, those Keith makes especially to spike up their sex life, because he’s a sap _and_ a witch. The flames flicker gently and guide them to the bathroom, from inside which they can hear the gentle splashing of water against their bathtub.

Shiro’s lounging in the foam covered water, his mechanical arm hanging outside the tub, his white hair plastered to his forehead. He looks relaxed and almost asleep, a look both Keith and Lance have missed more than their ready to admit.

“Welcome home,” Shiro greets them without opening his eyes, but moving his legs to make space for them.

Lance is naked and in record time is straddling Shiro and peppering his face with sweet joyful kisses.

“Missed you, babe,” Shiro whispers and Lance hums in pleasure. Keith smiles to himself as he calmly takes off his shirt. Lance lives for pet names. It’s so ridiculous and endearing at the same time that it’s embarrassing when one slips out of his own lips and Lance just radiates happiness _for hours_.

He watches the chaste playful kisses turn languid in the steam, as he slowly pops open his jeans button and drags down the zip. He leans against the sink and watches on. Lance settles down, sitting carefully in Shiro’s lap, and Keith can imagine the press of Shiro’s likely hard cock in between Lance’s cheeks.

He palms himself slowly, the jeans gradually slipping off his hips. In the tub they’re tongue-fucking each other, Lance letting Shiro guide him and steady him. He’s oscillating his hips, so slowly Keith might have never noticed if not for the tiny waves the movement creates in the water.

Shiro sighs loudly, drinking in Lance’s lust and need and love from his lips, his hands holding onto his bubble butt underwater, likely squeezing it by the way Lance moans in the kiss.

His underwear is becoming too constricting and Keith finally takes it off with his jeans. He reaches for his hardening cock and gives a couple rough tugs, closer to painful than enjoyable, both his cock and hand too dry.

There’s Lance’s array of extremely expensive lotions on the sink counter that he could use – with the added bonus of pissing off Lance – but Keith decides he doesn’t want to watch tonight, he wants Lance’s amazing ass for his own pleasure. He want to prep him for Shiro’s cock, he want to rim him while he’s bent on the side of the tub, with Shiro’s fingers in his own ass. He wants to jerk him off while Lance is full to the brim with Shiro, maybe even blow him while he’s knotted on Shiro.

He wants to come on Shiro’s fingers, painting Lance’s skin. He wants Lance to remember during the full moon that he has two mates to keep him safe and secure. He wants to give Shiro more than he can take from Lance alone.

It’s weird, he distractedly considers, just how much the full moon effects all of them in response to Lance’s behavioural changes. It would be an interesting thought to mull over, had he not been in walking distance of his two lovers, who are still trying their best to melt together in kisses.

As he covers the few steps separating them, Lance moans loudly and extends one of his hands – the one previously on Shiro’s skin, while the other stays in Shiro’s hair, occasionally tugging the way they all know Shiro loves.

He takes the offered hand and guides it down to his cock. Lance gives a few strokes, moans loudly and lets Shiro go, his lips bleeding from a cut that is already closing.

Lance, for all that he’s the slender of the triad, effortlessly manhandles Shiro so that he’s giving Keith his back, although not precisely aligned, so that Lance can still sit on his lap while he faces Keith’s cock.

His mouth on him is expected, but that doesn’t make him any less breathless. As much as Lance usually loves to tease, because of the moon, or maybe just his sexual frustration, he vigorously sucks on him from the very beginning, taking care in slicking up Keith’s cock so that he can deepthroat him sooner.

Shiro moans loudly, the blowjob a few inches from his face, and he throws back his head against the side of the tub, so that he can look at Keith. Lance grunts in pain, his hand the one thing between Shiro’s head and the tub side, and the vibrations send a shiver up Keith’s spine.

His hand finds Lance’s in Shiro’s hair at the same time that Shiro’s finger must breach into Lance, going by the loud moan. Keith is trying to bite back his own noises, but it’s not the easiest thing to do when he has Shiro’s eyes on him and Lance’s mouth on his cock.

“Babe, let up,” Shiro tries to get Lance to stop sucking, but the only thing he gets is Lance stilling. His tongue presses once on Keith’s underside, and next thing he knows, he’s sliding deep in Lance’s throat.

Shiro must forget his original plan, as he moans loudly for all of them. Keith bites his tongue accidentally, the copper taste of his own blood blooming with the pain. Lance’s nose is hidden in his black curls and he’s just stimulating Keith while slowly sliding back and forth the same few inches of his cock. It goes on for a couple of minutes, Lance’s eyes gradually watering with strain, while he stubbornly takes advantage of his lack of gag reflex and the marvellous gift to mankind that is werewolves’ ability to hold their breath when needed for longer than any human could ever aspire to.

Keith is very grateful, but a whine from Shiro reminds him that he had other plans. As Lance eases off and eventually breathes in loudly, Keith disentangles from his lovers to join them in the bathtub. It’s a near fit, close to uncomfortable, but then again, Keith never really cared for comfort.

In a coordinated move, he and Shiro lifts Lance and position him on top of a reclining Shiro, on his hands and knees, ass and back out of the water. Lance shivers and Shiro brings him closer to his chest, while Keith eventually reaches for the bottle of scentless lube they keep on the bathtub counter for exactly this occasions – and Shiro’s masturbating, if Keith has to be truthful.

Lance likes a bit of roughness close to the full moon, so Keith doesn’t mind doing a sloppy job of underprepping him, well knowing that the water would help easing Shiro in without tearing anything – and even if anything tore, they all knew Lance was just going to heal himself in record time, except that would put an end to sexy times and result in an overly pissed off werewolf.

“Come on,” Lance whines, hiding his face against Shiro’s neck and possibly entertaining himself by sucking some mark on it. Keith huffs, but does retreat all two of his fingers from Lance and positions his pucker against Shiro’s cock. Both of them shiver, and Lance eventually moves back so that one of his legs his against the bottom of the tub and the other is awkwardly pressed between Shiro’s thigh and the other side of the tub.

Neither seems to mind the uncomfortable position as Lance slowly sinks down, a loud, happy and relieved moan leaving his throat. Shiro’s hands are painting bruise on Lance’s tan hips, bruises that only Keith can enjoy for the few fleeting seconds they exist.

“God, yes,” Shiro exhales when he is completely in Lance. Keith can’t see because of the absurd quantity of foam and bubbles, so he ends up using his fingers to feel the exact place his lovers are joined together. Lance breath stutters and Shiro hisses and moans when Keith’s fingers slip downwards to his balls and perineum.

He watches mesmerised as Lance and Shiro find their slow rhythm, while his free hand finds his own cock and the other one breaches Shiro. It results in Shiro bucking up almost dislodging Lance, who accidentally splashes an awful amount of water to the floor.

“This,” Lance whispers, still riding Shiro languidly, “this isn’t working.”

Shiro hums and nods, his body pursuing two stimuli at the same time, and does nothing to change their current situation.

“Yeah, no,” Lance mutters and whine as he lifts up, exercising quite a bit of superhuman strength against Shiro’s death grip. Shiro whimpers, reaching back towards where Keith is still fingering him.

Lance turns around, gives Shiro his back and cheekily smiles at Keith.

“Sweetie, you’re gonna do most of the moving, okay?” He asks Shiro, who just inhales loudly and nods, clearly more centred than before. He lifts himself up on his knees, dislodging Keith’s fingers, and gently guides Lance back to his cock, helping him sink slowly down. Keith shuffles forward, still holding his cock and reaching for Lance’s with his free hands.

When Lance touches down they both moan, but Lance’s dies on Keith’s rough lips. Shiro moves Lance up and down on his cock, quite like a doll and Keith – deprived of the sinful mouth muttering blasphemies as Shiro hits his sweet spot every single time – decides to match Shiro’s pace with both his hands.

It’s a slow and tortuous orgasm, and eventually Lance ends up on hands and knees, accidentally dunking himself a couple times, but finally, _finally_ , Lance comes with a cry and Shiro lets go too and comes biting down on Lance’s shoulder.

Keith’s hand strokes faster yet he still wants his orgasm to be for Lance.

“Please,” he mumbles, holding himself back from the precipice only through sheer willpower, unable to slow down his hand. Shiro, bless his soul, understands and lifts Lance back, so that his neck and chest are both out of the water and pushes him closer to Keith. Through his blissed out state, Lance hums happily and grabs Keith’s hips with both hands.

Letting go is freeing, white hot light bursting behind his eyelids. When he opens his eye another wave of pleasure rocks through his body at the sweet sight of Lance happily smearing his cum around his skin, marking himself owned.

Keith lowers himself so he can sit against the other side of the tub. Not even the tap digging uncomfortably between his shoulder blades can take away his satisfaction, only crowned by Lance crawling between his legs to kiss him languidly, all under Shiro’s sated watchful eyes.

It’s safe, it’s perfect and it’s home.

 

It’s past seven in the evening when they eventually make it to the bedroom, half dressed, hair still wet and shivering for the cold.

“Everyone’s meeting up tonight,” Shiro tells them while he stands in front of his closet, eyeing his vast array of clothes. Between Shiro and Lance they could open a store, Keith thinks, watching his lover start to work on their evening outfits.

He shrugs to himself and goes for his usual black skinny jeans and to mix it up a bit he chooses a shirt that possibly belonged to Shiro when he was younger and that gives off a vibe of vintage and well loved. It’s a weird colour somewhere between dark grey and navy blue – Lance for sure would know – and it’s soft and light on the skin. It has the bonus of completely hiding the numerous runes and sigils littering his body after a lifetime of practicing magic.

He adds his usual crystal for protection to finish off his outfit and hands Lance an amber necklace so that it can help easing him through the moon cycle. It’s the only aid that actually works on Lance and eases the abnormal amount of stress he goes through every month. Lance pecks him on the cheek and picks a different shirt – probably that will go better with the stone, but Keith wouldn’t know. Amber just looks really beautiful against Lance’s skin.

“Who’s gonna be there?” Lance questions as he spray himself with a subtle cologne. Keith is on the bed, playing online games to pass the time while his boyfriends do their thing to look even prettier than they do normally. All that grooming isn’t for him, and everyone’s accepted he’s a lost cause. They still love him, so he doesn’t really mind waiting and beating all of Shiro’s records.

“Everyone,” answers Shiro, tense. Both Lance and Keith stop what they’re doing to look up at him. It’s odd, Shiro looks vaguely insecure or stressed.

“With everyone, do you mean Adam will be there too?” Lance asks and Keith wonders if it’s a lucky guess or something like smell gave Shiro away.

He knows that Lance doesn’t like Adam because a part of Shiro still reacts to him, but Keith was there when Shiro and Adams where in love and he remembers the heartache it ended with. He remembers the hushed conversations, more cutting than any shouting match, the tenderness of Shiro’s tears and the all-encompassing knowledge that part of him, a deep dark part of him, had been happy that it didn’t work out.

Lance wasn’t there, so he still gets annoyed when Adam and Shiro are in the same room, because Shiro will always love Adam and vice versa. It’s something they can’t avoid feeling and Lance is just jealous and insecure and easily angered near the full moon. So it doesn’t really surprise Keith all that much that he’s trembling with harshly suppressed feelings, far away from Shiro and rooted to his spot.

“I need air,” he ends up saying, leaving them in the bedroom and escaping to the balcony of the study. Keith sighs, already giving up on his undying hope that Lance won’t pick the study as his den for the month.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro mutters. He’s not looking at Keith, he’s frowning at his collection of bracelets.

“It’s okay, he’s gotta let it go sooner or later,” Keith tells him and closes the game he was playing. Shiro smiles sadly, and eventually picks the watch Lance gave him for his birthday that year. Keith smiles and leaves him with a peck on his cheek, deciding to go and do something about Lance’s mood.

 

He’s standing on the balcony, beautiful and sad. The moon is up in the sky, blessing her child with her light. Keith would have stopped to admire the view for a few moments, but Lance is, as always, hard to sneak up to.

“I just can’t deal with it, I try,” he starts unprompted, “every single time, I try, okay?”

Lance is not looking at him, so he quietly sides up to him and makes sure their elbows touch. It’s a small comfort that he can offer and won’t be refused.

“I know you do,” Keith whispers, hoping to get his message across better than the other thousands of times they had this discussion since Adam came back into Shiro’s life. It’s not an easy thing to admit, but he’s glad to be able to offer Lance a shoulder and some help, but sometimes it hurts having to be the bigger person when he too would like to throw a tantrum every time he has to admit what he does every time: “but he’s someone Shiro’ll always love, no matter what.”

“How do you do that?” Lance wonders, looking at him. There’s still blood on his lips, and Keith wants to wipe it off, but he refrains, barely. “How are you so calm and sure?”

Lance hand grip the metal of the balcony, his knuckles white with strain. Keith can’t help himself and he grabs the closest one. Lance relaxes only marginally, but it’s enough.

“Saw it be good and watched it turn sour,” he finally admits. He’s never told Lance about it, never confessed the anguish of seeing Shiro happy with someone that wasn’t him and having to muster enough sincerity to actually be happy for him. Lance would understand, he’s good at seeing the best in people, even in Keith, “Towards the end, Adam grew tired of arguing and Shiro could never really open up with him about his issues. It was bad, a lot of it.”

There’s silence, but Lance’s hand turns so that it can hold Keith’s. He wants to tell Lance all about those years, but most of it is Shiro’s story. They may be open with each other’s past, but some of the things that still haunt Keith are just private parts of Shiro’s life that he only found out about through eavesdropping or blatantly invading his privacy. It all says more about him than Shiro, and he’s not really ready yet for Lance to get acquainted with how dark a person Keith can be if pushed.

“It’s just, when I see them together I wonder,” Lance continues, unaware of Keith’s inner turmoil. Keith gets his point, though. Shiro and Adam are still so sweet to each other and they’d make such a perfect couple – except that Shiro’s not who he used to be, and Adam has never really offered second chances easily, and with Shiro it wouldn’t be a second chance, more like a thousandth, “what does Shiro see in me?”

Lance’s eyes are bright in the moonlight, and although Keith is mentally making a list of things Shiro loves of Lance, in the end, the answer is quite easier, all things considered.

“His future.”

He stares at the city, the skyscrapers cutting out much of their view, and the obnoxious lights hiding the stars in their artificial shadows. He can feel Lance’s shocked eyes on his skin, even through the shirt, caressing him in awe. It’s a special moment, he realises quietly.

“Where did that come from? Are you being romantic?!”

Lance asks, quite ruining the magic of the moment. It irks Keith, like always.

“What, sometimes I can be romantic!” He complains, his hand still in Lance, but now they’re facing each other and he wants to punch and kiss his pretty lips.

“Oh please you wouldn’t know romantic if it bit you on the ass!” Lance complains, rolling his eyes back, like he’s suffered for a long time from Keith’s shortcomings. That is absurd. Someone has to be the normal person in their relationship, and considering Lance’s obnoxious cheap romance and Shiro’s daily small gestures, that person has to be Keith.

But it offers him a wonderful opportunity for a witty comeback, and who’s Keith to pass up on such good occasion.

“You do like biting my ass.”

He delivers with a quick smirk. Lance sputters adorably. He blinks a few times, uncertain what to think, and how to reply, and Keith basks in the glory of rendering Lance speechless. No funny comeback, no stupid pun. Ah, the majesty of silence. Keith pats himself on the back, and quietly moves to leave him there.

“Oh my God that was smooth,” Lance comments once his back is to him and then he gasps, “Wait! Who are you, what did you do with Keith?”

 

The place where they meet up is a weird cross between a restaurant, a diner and a pub. It looks like a diner, but serves bright colourful cocktails and Mexican food to go with them. It is also packed with people, and they only find their table thanks to Lance’s keen nose and deep knowledge of Hunk’s motor-oil smell, salty food preferences and the clear sound of his laugh.

Keith would be jealous if he didn’t know Lance had practically grown up with Hunk and considers him as the one sibling he’s closest to.

There are three seats still vacant, one between Hunk and Allura, and two between Pidge and the new girl Coran got for the internship program. Adam is sandwiched between Pidge and Matt, all three of them talking gibberish possibly about some new tech the Holts had been developing. Keith sits next to Pidge the moment Lance plops down next to Hunk, after a bear hug from the Engineer and exchanging flirty advances with a nonplussed Allura.

Shiro sits down next to Keith and squeezes his hand under the table for a brief moment. There’s a huge amount of nachos with cheeses and jalapenos on the table and Keith is suddenly starving. He can’t remember what he had for lunch, and before he knows it he’s stuffing his face.

Shiro orders his usual poison dart cocktail for him, and gets himself a dry gin martini, with extra olives, because he knows Lance is going to steal one. He hears Lance go with a Paloma, chicken fajitas with their strongest habaneros and a suicide burrito. He can hear him challenging Pidge, their resident spicy champion, to a rematch. Pidge doesn’t know what backing down means – a fairly common trait in their group, Keith has to admit – and therefore orders them extra spicy nachos and suicide buffalo wings. Shiro add in a normal chicken fajita and nachos with jalapenos for them both. Keith doesn’t listen to Hunk’s order, well aware that it’s going to be long and yet he’ll be able to clean off anything left by Pidge and Lance.

Shiro’s hand is warm and sleek in Keith’s. His own hand plays with robotic fingers while Shiro waits for their orders to arrive.

“It is quite interesting, yes,” Coran is saying to the new girl and Shiro. He’s talking about the flower Lance found and how there’s no sign of how it got where it was.

“How was the case today?” Shiro asks him privately, his head leaning toward him and Keith shrugs but turns towards him, munching on the last of his nachos.

“Weird,” he says and recounts their meeting with the witness and admits to growing annoyed and leaving Lance alone with a bit of shame tinting his cheeks. Shiro just tightens his hold on Keith’s hand and says nothing until the very end of his story.

“It seems right up your alley,” he comments when Keith is done and he’s interrupted by the waiter and their drinks. Shiro’s hand leaves his to help the waiter, and somehow Keith feels robbed. He throws a glance at Lance, but he’s chatting away with Allura, their voices too low for Keith to hear anything. They’re smiling and their heads are close together – and Keith doesn’t like it one bit, so he decides to turn back to Shiro and avoid giving in to his jealousy.

He takes a sip of his drink and hums in satisfaction. Shiro next to him is munching on an olive, and he gets offered the second. There’s another toothpick with two more olives on in the glass, and Keith waits for Shiro to eat his second olive and hand Lance the remaining one, before he gets a hold of his hand again.

Shiro smiles happily at him and squeezes back.

“Anyway, it’s a good case, it seems it could be a witch,” Shiro finally adds, but Keith just makes an uncertain sound.

“I don’t think it’s magic. You made things levitate and the spells took a lot of your energy, but this spell is supposedly been working for five days,” he admits, miffed that the case took so long to end up in his hands just because no one noticed a levitating flower for days.

“I don’t know Keith, you might have low opinions of the Police, but it seems strange that they wouldn’t notice such a thing,” Shiro wonders, taking a sip of his Martini, “I think we should talk to them, maybe it wasn’t there before.”

“And what, they’re leaving clues?”

Talking to Shiro about cases always brings up a different point of view and it could results in clarity or more confusion. It was the same with Lance, but Keith didn’t like admitting that much.

“Or a signature,” Shiro concludes, giving him the look he used when he was still a student and overthinking a simple problem with an easy overlooked solution.

He makes a point of talking to the Detective that handed him the case, and maybe visiting a couple other crime scenes.

 

 

Lance is not a fan of waking up, especially when it is the day of the full moon and his whole body is telling him to sleep off the little pinpricks of magic in his bones.

Being born a werewolf is surely much easier than becoming one, when it comes to transforming. For example he never felt pain during the shift, and his family heritage made it so that he could even shift fully to a beautiful wolf, something a bitten wolf would never achieve.

However, no wolf could escape shifting during the full moon. Born wolves had an easier time controlling themselves, but they were still driven by their basest instinct – which in Lance’s case made him horny beyond relief. It was a pretty common issue in his family, and many of his aunts and cousins and even his sister, had ended up pregnant on the full moon.

Either way, that instinct clashed strongly with Keith’s desire to use the moon’s power in his cleansings and spells or _whatever_ he did on the full moon.

Shiro was a blessing, always hungry and down to play with him, never even caring if Lance’s claws and teeth were out – and Lance could admit to himself, as he laid in bed, considering what to do with his erection, - Shiro was never scared away by the odd instincts that his wolf part pushed to the surface.

“Lance, you’re running late,” Shiro informed him from the kitchen, possibly sensing the sexual energy in the house. Lance sighed, closing the tiny compartment of things he was ashamed of wanting from his partners.

He didn’t bother with a cold shower, but took his time cleaning himself up inside, and if that took more time than necessary, it was his business only. He dressed quickly in his usual gym outfit and went to greet Shiro, who was only wearing track pants, an apron and slippers as his usual.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. Shiro smiled and pointed to the island, where his breakfast was waiting for him. His usual pre-workout was one of Lance’s favourite meals: a bowl of Greek yogurt with slices of fruit carefully prepared by Shiro with extra love because Lance was one hundred percent sure he wouldn’t eat at all if he could use the prepping time to sleep longer.

There was also his orange juice and a glass of almond milk – Shiro had them switch to almond and oats for some odd reason Lance had not really grasped when he had explained. He had a hunch that it related to Keith being intolerant to lactose but unable to resist dairies, which would make absolute sense. The guy had no self-control whatsoever. Lance considered it a miracle he was still alive and kicking.

“I’ll be back by noon,” he says as he watches Shiro patter around with the laundry basket, his lovely apron and his out of the world body.

“I’ll probably go into work early, so I can catch Keith for lunch,” he gets as answer from the guest bathroom and laundry room.

He finishes his yogurt and says goodbye to his lover with a kiss that almost turns into something that will make him late, which Shiro stops with a smile and a hard slap on his ass that tingles pleasantly for a few minutes. At least as long as it takes him to get to the garage and start the car.

He arrives late for his aerial dancing class anyway.

 

“How is this even possible?!” Shiro hears from Keith’s office, before he even walks in. He’s yet to clock in, but he’d looked forward to taking his lover for lunch. He sighs before he enters, as it might just not happen.

Keith is sitting at his desk, submerged by case files that come from a great number of folders that are littering the floor, full of other sensitive files and disturbingly graphic pictures.

“Lunch?” he asks as a last effort, before he lets Keith consume him with the case. He distantly notes that he should’ve had a bigger breakfast.

“Yes, fuck, yes,” Keith almost screams, a file flying out of his hands and onto the visitors chair.

“Yes?” Shiro wonders surprised. Keith finally looks at him, and he’s a step away from blowing a fuse.

“Yes, I need a break, I’m done.”

He’s already reaching for his jacket – the PIA standardised one – and stepping on the files and folders on the ground with gusto and petty revenge. It would be amusing to watch had those not been government property and sensitive material.

Then again, Shiro considers as he follows Keith out of the office, they’re not on fire, yet.

They go to Keith favourite restaurant, a hipsters kind of joint that serves vegan food and organic coffee. Keith mostly appreciates not having to ask dairy-free options, and Shiro has to admit, the coffee is terrific.

“There have been sixteen more cases like this, can you believe it?” Keith starts as they occupy a small table next to the window. Keith leaves Shiro the seat with the wall at his back and Shiro draws a breath of relief – he’s not so strung on that he needs his back safe. Keith can get into moods even faster than Lance sometimes.

“Sixteen, and no one made the fucking connection, okay?” Keith goes on, getting a hold of the menu and fuming behind it. Shiro sighs and prepares to order his usual Squash Lasagna, without even looking at the menu. He asks the waitress still water while Keith peruses the menu, looking for things he hasn’t tried yet.

He ends up ordering the Seitan Vindaloo – whatever that is – and a side of sweet potato fries to share. Shiro thanks the waitress for her patience and wins a smile. They’re regulars and the staff is pretty friendly, but the waitress is new and seems to take Keith’s mood the wrong way.

Keith doesn’t seem to notice as he hands back his menu, then changes mind and takes it ‘for later’ – which in Keith language means that dessert is happening and no one can stop him. He looks like the irritable freshman Shiro was assigned back in the Academy so many years before. All cute pouts and drastic solutions, mixed in with gay awakenings and awful people skills.

“Somehow no one noticed the bloody levitating memento,” Keith mutters when they’re alone again.

“Was it logged on the file?” he asks, knowing quite well that Keith needs positive feedback to open up his mind to others, even him.

“Yes, on every single case there was something about a levitating object belonging to the missing person, covered in blood of the victim,” he continues, looking Shiro in the eyes.

Shiro can’t help think just how cute he is when he’s mad.

“So they noticed,” he says, and Keith grunts loudly.

“They didn’t make a connection,” he grouses, but starts to placate.

“So the object is always different.” he asks, guessing that unwinding Keith could serve as a briefing for him too.

“Yes, a pen, a feather, lots of different flowers, a marble… little thing with sentimental value,” Keith reaches out, putting his hand in the middle of the table and Shiro obliges, covering it with his own. Keith moves it back and their fingers are intertwining together. It’s sappy and romantic, especially for Keith.

“Even a stamp,” he adds, as an afterthought, “just things the missing women collected or loved.”

“So we have a serial killer that kidnaps women, kills their abusive husbands and leaves as a signature his reasons,” Shiro understands.

Keith nods and adds, “I know we should let them do their thing, give ‘em a medal, maybe.”

They both smile, and let their hands go as the waitress come with their drinks. They both thank her and she appears mollified by that. They drink in silence and Shiro checks his phone for any message from Lance. There are none, but he’s probably overworking himself on a pole or something.

“Anyway, I’m sure it’s not a witch,” Keith says out of the blue, checking his own phone. He smiles for a second, then puts the phone on the table. It’s an old model, inherited from Lance when he’d gone for a newer one, but a smartphone nonetheless, which for Keith sometimes seemed a monumental effort.

“How?” he wonders, curious.

“The stamp was still attached to the ceiling, they never got it off, it’s not stuck, but they can’t touch it,” he smiles, “it moves away every time they try!”

“Well, that’s definitely odd,” he agrees. He had never heard of such a spell ever before.

“And there’s more!” Keith adds, suddenly excited. Shiro is surprised both by how strange the case is and how much Keith got done in a morning.

“Only supernatural people can see them!” he finally says.

“Oh,” is out of Shiro’s lips before he can reign it in. Keith lips stretch into a smug smile. That is definitely good news, as it restricts the field to every creature only other supernatural beings can see.

Which, in fact, are not as many as humans seem to believe, once they’re grouped under macro-categories.

“There’s still a lot to research, but it definitely helps, right?” he wonders aloud, and Shiro mechanically agrees. There’s something that is tickling his memory, but he can’t put a finger on it.

The food arrives, steamy and smelling deliciously, and so does Lance’s text, telling them he’s just parked and on his way to their restaurant. Keith answers quickly, but Shiro is too lost in his memory from his academic years to answer.

As he eats, it feels disturbingly like he already knows the answer to this mystery, and yet he can’t remember it at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you know, I added a chapter to the count. I'm trying to get the whole fic done by the time s7 airs (just in case I truly need 7 years to recover from it) but it just keep getting longer and I don't know which scenes I should cut?? So yes, I'm terribly sorry this chapter was boring but I still hope you enjoyed it. Please tell me what you didn't like and what you thought was good, I live for feedback!


	3. Trail of Light like a Comet's Tail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance spends the Full Moon alone, or does he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you thought I'm consistent with my chapter's length, I'm sorry there's nothing consistent in my life.   
> At some point I'll explain most of the magic things I made up and what the hell Shiro is... but you're free to guess, I dropped around enough hints for you guys to maybe piece it together? I'm not entirely sure, but the first to get it right wins a short fanfic (vld only and up to 2k words. Pairing to be agreed upon.)

“Agent Kogane, sir,” the poor new boy looks terrified of stepping into the office, and Lance can agree that it does look like a bomb exploded in the middle of an archive. Keith has never been tidy, but he’s just a disaster when in the middle of a case. It drives Lance nuts.

“What?” Keith asks, coming up from behind a pile of bestiaries they had brought in from the records department. The kid audibly swallows his heart back in his chest, he’s so stiff Lance almost takes pity on him. Almost, but he's been the most entertaining thing in the past six hours and he's itching for a distraction.

“The lab results you were waiting for are here,” that definitely gets Keith’s attention, but he’s too deep into the mess to get to the door. Shiro walks to the new guy and accept the lab file with a smile and a kind word of gratitude.

Lance can smell pleasure and desire a mile away from the kid and doesn’t even try to hide his growl. Any other day he’d understand – hell he had one hell of a gay awakening with Shiro too, the man’s just unbelievable – but not today. Today is bite first, ask questions later.

Keith seems of the same mind as he again stops looking through the huge books just to glare at the kid, who is actually smart enough to leave the office of the stressed witch and restless werewolf.

Lance meets Shiro’s annoyed stare and whimpers guiltily. He has to do something about his jealous streak, he agrees, it’s starting to be ridiculous. And he’s lucky Keith is just too scary to be attractive during the full moon, because he would possibly bite for real if he felt he had both his mates to keep safe and secure.

The lab results end up in Keith’s hands without anyone addressing Lance’s problem, which is refreshing, for once.

“Not a poltergeist,” Keith states while reading the file. Lance, who’s been reading about all known kinds of poltergeists for the past three hours, closes the book with a loud “Fuck it,” as a way to make his annoyance known. Shiro frowns as he silently goes through his pile of files to extract those regarding poltergeist cases.

Keith sighs aloud and does the cat-thing he always unconsciously does when annoyed. He pushes aside whatever  it is in front of him and watches it tumble down to the floor. Today it’s an ancient tome on physical manifestations of incorporeal supernatural beings.

“This isn’t working,” Lance says, getting ready for an argument. He thinks as an afterthought that he should’ve taken the day off, since it's in his race's rights to stay home and avoid any kind of human interaction when so on the edge already. He’s definitively spending the next full moon practising pole dancing. Or even convincing Shiro their flat would look prettier with a pole in the bedroom so that he can give them private shows. He’s quite sure it’ll only take a couple of blowjobs and a very pouty day of subtle whines.

“This isn’t working,” Keith agrees, leaning back against the wall. Shiro sighs loudly, happy to stop the researching mess or for the avoided argument, Lance cannot tell. He just strongly agrees with both sentiments.

“We hit a wall,” Shiro starts slowly with a pep talk he’s probably been rehearsing for the last half an hour. Keith just nods, not particularly disheartened.

“That’s the point, we just keep hitting walls, I thought we were onto something solid with the woman in white legend, and yet…” he admits, looking at the piles of previously put aside research material.

“I still think that was solid,” Lance grumbles and Keith uncharacteristically shrugs.

“Okay I had enough, what’s wrong with you?” Lance asks, surprising Keith. Shiro moves uncomfortably where he’s sitting perched on Keith’s chair, but says nothing.

“I’m just tired, I want to solve this case and go home to spend the full moon with you,” Keith admits sourly, a blush spreading on his cheeks, and Lance has a hard time not cooing at him. He manages to restrain himself only because it’s just weird that Keith is this open with his feelings, even years into their relationship.

“Still weird, dude,” Lance informs him, maybe a bit unkindly. Keith shrugs him off and sighs again looking at the amount of material they still have to go through.

“Lance,” Shiro admonishes him, somehow managing to look worried for Keith all the same.

“No, he’s right, it’s weird,” Keith eventually caves under their combined worrying. He shuffles through pages, trying to distract himself from talking about feelings.

“It’s just that every time I touch the flower evidence my throat closes up and it’s hard to breathe underneath the,” he struggles to find words, but eventually settles on: “the feeling of doom.”

“Keith, I need to see the evidence,” Shiro demands urgently, so out of character for someone who would normally gather Keith to himself and talk him through whatever he is going through. Keith nods and looks for the cordless phone buried underneath their work.

He quietly requests to have the flower brought upstairs – proof that whatever’s affecting him is powerful enough for him to want to get rid of evidence he’d spend hours analysing any other time.

As he ends the call Lance crawls to him on hands and knees and lays a hand on his bare arm, squeezing tenderly. He gets a half smile in return.

Shiro seems lost in his thoughts and Lance lets him be, in order to provide comfort to the one boyfriend that smells of acute distress and shame. He doesn’t do anything too forward – as Keith never liked exposing their relationship in the office – but it is Keith himself that slides closer to Lance and holds up a book so that they both can seem intent on reading the same paragraph when the new kid from before brings Shiro the flower in its plastic zip bag.

Shiro opens it and sniffs its content, making a face at the stink that Lance can smell wafting out from afar. Keith shivers and burrows in Lance’s side, uncaring about their underling looking at them in confusion.

“Keith, it’s not doom you’re feeling,” Shiro says as he closes the zip lock. They all look at him, and Lance remembers a time when he was the new boy and Shiro was their Head of Department. He still looks the part, sitting in Keith’s chair – his old one – with his feature set in stone, determination burning in his eyes, all the answers on the tip of his tongue.

“It’s pixies’ tears,” he reveals.

 

Lance has never seen a pixie in his whole life. It’s not uncommon for werewolves to avoid contact with any other race, but any good pup knew the story of the jokester pixies that stole pups to exchange them with babies. It’s not even just a night time fear, considering that Shiro’s fame came from solving a case of mass changelings that had terrified new parents for years before the young detective had made the connection.

Lance doesn’t know exactly how that case was eventually solved – except that everything had been labelled top secret and Shiro had been kidnapped only a few years later, and then Lance had inadvertently helped saving him and fallen for the man while at it. It had been a whirlwind and he never pried Shiro for details.

Keith had once mentioned that the Witch Academy had removed the subject from their curricula and Shiro had not seemed surprised in the least.

Lance didn’t feel especially bad for not making the connection for the case, and yet Keith seemed livid at himself for missing it.

“Do you think he’s going to be fine?” he asks Shiro, burrowing in his mountain of bed sheets, smelly clothes and blankets. He’s found his perfect den in the living room, where he could see his lovers go around the flat while still being able to hide away for the change.

“Don’t worry,” Shiro answers with a kind smile, sitting down at the end of his water mattress, not touching his nest until invited in. Lance really wants him to cuddle up behind him and slowly fuck him so that he can concentrate on something instead of letting his heightened senses bully him for hours.

Keith needs Shiro more, and Lance is inclined towards sharing his boyfriends. His mama taught him well.

He still can’t help himself from crawling closer and sniffing at Shiro’s pulse point on his wrist. Shiro gently guides him to his throat and lets him scent him.

When Lance opens his eyes again – he can’t remember closing them – he can see Keith hovering nearby, wafting warm waves of cinnamon and sugar smell.

“Do we have time for a quickie?” he wonders aloud and Lance snorts – there’s no such thing as a quickie with him on the full moon. It’s either nothing or hours of lazy sex punctuated by bouts of aggression and claiming. Keith knows and tends to stick with the no sex usually.

“We could go to the Academy tomorrow,” Shiro says, and Keith seems torn.

“They won’t give us anything during office hours,” he eventually says, looking defeated. Lance has to bite his tongue to keep in the embarrassing whine that forms in the back of his throat.

“I don’t really like leaving Lance alone like this,” Shiro complains, but he's already standing up. Keith doesn’t reply and steers clear of his den. It hurts, it always does, but Lance tries to rationalise it anyway. His more animal instinct are not especially easy to deal with, though, especially with Keith hesitating on the door and coming toward him, just to hover at the edge of the den.

Keith has never really respected Lance’s den – somehow the idea of living together signifies in his mind that there are no places off-limits – and Lance just hates weird smells in his carefully constructed corner of paradise. And yet, as Keith jumps in gracelessly, making the water slosh around underneath them, and capturing his lips, hands burying themselves in his short hair and pulling painfully… lips bruising in their violent show of need, Lance can’t just help falling in love all over again and appreciating Keith's lack of boundaries.

It’s a painful kiss, all teeth and forceful pushing, his neck hurts at the way Keith holds him in place, and his lips tingle with the well-known feeling of skin stitching itself back together, just as Keith conquers his mouth with his tongue. It’s heated and messy, and Lance whimpers in physical pain as Keith lets go of his hair and lips and pins him to the bed in less than a second.

“Love you,” Keith admits, this time chastely pressing his lips to Lance’s, “We’ll be back ASAP, promise,” he purrs naughtily, a smile charged with promises lighting up his face. Lance sighs and lets the tension bleed out of him. Only then does Keith leave, reaching Shiro and the door in a few steps.

Lance, alone, whimpers and turns to bury his nose in the covers, trying not to single out the stink of the cabbage soup Keith ate for dinner.

 

Lance wakes up in the middle of the night.

He opens his eyes slowly, acknowledging his form only because of the restricted amount of colours he can distinguish in the room still lit by the television on mute.

It takes a while before he can pinpoint what woke him up: the fluttering of hummingbird wings and the odd smell of sulphur and decay.

There’s a fast moving light in front of his muzzle, so close that his whiskers are annoyingly disturbed by its movements. The light is tiny but, as he follows it with his eyes, it moves back and turns bigger and bigger until it’s the size of a human fist and Lance can recognise some distantly human features.

He whines, too tired to turn back to human and ask it what it wants and what it’s doing in his home and den.

The light flickers around curiously looking around the place. It hides under the couch for a few seconds before flying out again, dragging a lost dirty sock that makes Lance wince at finally finding out what had been smelling up the place for days.

It flies around the place, moving stuff out of place and adorably sneezing in a full body movement when it makes a cloud of dust by moving an old ornamental doily his mother gave him when he moved in.

It’s adorable and Lance closes his eyes, lulled in by the curiosity typical of a puppy, until the light comes closer again and it makes its nose itch. It is a smell he remembers but can’t place but it still alerts him enough for him to try and move. His body is sluggish, uncoordinated and heavy. It is not normal, he considers as he crashes back to the mattress, not having taken even a step forward.

The light flickers around him, leaving behind a trail of light not dissimilar from a comet’s tail. It’s beautiful, but Lance can’t appreciate it as a cottoned panic start to mount in him when he realises that his body is slowly growing too heavy for him and he can’t change back to human even if he tries with all his might.

He thinks of his fingers meeting Keith’s and Shiro’s, he thinks of how he could open a can of soda with a flick of his thumb and index, he thinks about standing up on his long legs and walking around, he even goes so far as thinking of using the toilet and having sex with his lovers, but no trick to change back does it. He only feels more tired and sluggish.

The last thing he sees before being dragged back into sleep it the light turning red and puffing dust made of light into his eyes.

Then, it’s dreamless darkness.

 

Keith wakes him up dousing him in cold water.

He barks and growls and tries to bite his hand but meets metal and whines. Shiro shushes him and apologises profusely. Lance huffs and gives him his back as he changes back to human.

The sky out of the wall of windows is just then tinting clouds in soft pink and baby blue hues, the moon still full, but less bright and imposing.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Keith snaps at him as he lets the plastic bowl he just used fall to the floor. He’s mid transformation when Keith’s arms close around him so tight it hurts. His throat lets out a last sound closer to the wolf than the man, but Keith only hugs him tighter, almost cutting out his supply of air. He turns to Shiro to beg for help but he finds his other lover worried out of his mind and stuck between throwing himself at Lance too and keeping to himself so they don’t suffocate him.

It’s a struggle, but he gets Keith to loosen his grip so that he can drag Shiro in the hug he seems to be so desperately needing.

After far too long for their standards – but Lance doesn’t complain because it’s hard being the one tactile person in the triad that is not afraid of taking what he wants for himself, be it a kiss, a hug or cuddles – they let him go.

“So,” he wonders aloud, pointedly ignoring the way Keith fails to surreptitiously wipe his tears on an old sweater Shiro donated for his den, “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry, but the flat smells of pixie magic and you were doused in pixie dust,” Shiro says, his throat strangles a few sounds and he has to clear it half way through. They both look so vulnerable, but Lance can’t remember anything bad happening.

“It’s okay, pixie dust is used to drain kids of their magic,” Keith tells him, gently cleaning sand from the corners of his eyes, he sounds genuinely upset.

“What happened?” he wonders aloud, but he receives no reply, only Shiro shaking his head.

“We were hoping you could tell us,” he adds, dragging him to his chest. Keith follows them and crowds Lance up, kissing him everywhere he can reach. It’s odd but pleasant.

Lance lets himself be cuddled, craving his lovers’ touch after a full moon spent sleeping off his endless energy – and yet, he realises, he can’t remember waking up multiple times to play around the house, he can’ remember hiding any of his lovers’ slippers, he can’t remember growing restless within the confines of the room.

His eyes dart around the room in search of any of his usual nightly activities, but nothing’s out of place, except everything is misplaced and odd and giving him an headache… until he notices a misplaced sock days old right next to the couch.

“Oh,” he says. Keith and Shiro stop their ministration and wait for him to elaborate in patient silence.

“There was a light, that was sentient and kind of like a tiny human flying around leaving a trail of light?”

“FUCKING PIXIES,” Keith screams in his ear, and hugs Lance tighter than even before.

He’s grumbling about revenge and using the little assholes in his potions, when Shiro relaxes against Lance.

“We might have an admirer,” Shiro moans in exhaustion, his eyes up to the ceiling. Lance is going to ask what he means when his eyes follow Shiro’s and there’s a moonstone from Keith’s collection fluctuating peacefully.

Keith’s reaction is nowhere as peaceful and Lance despairs for his sensitive hearing.

 

Keith doesn’t calm down for the rest of the day, which they pass cleaning the house of pixie dust. Lance is as tired as ever after the full moon, and he milks it all by doing almost nothing except doing his own laundry – his den needing to be sanitised just as much as the entirety of the living room and kitchen.

Shiro does most of the cleaning, while Keith tries to get the moonstone off the ceiling, failing miserably with every attempt. It takes Shiro’s own special brand of magic to make it stop fluctuating and Keith doesn’t seem any mollified by his crystal being back into his hands. He keeps muttering about having to cleanse it and every other one in his collection, and strengthening the wards around the house, making them so nasty to pixies to kill them instead of just repel them.

Lance doesn’t say anything, sharing with Shiro a private moment of discomfort, both well aware that anything able to kill a pixie for trespassing would affect them too, if not by killing them surely by being extremely painful.

Lance can’t exactly fault Keith for feeling violated in their own home, not when he was harassed for who knows how long I his own den to boot.

“If the pixie wanted us dead, we’d be,” Shiro tries to reassure him, but it doesn’t quite work. Lance can’t help but wonder what else a pixie would want from them.

It’s not until sun down that Shiro grows cranky with hunger and Lance lets himself be dragged to bed for a round of slow tender sex, only ruined by Keith puttering around the flat with haste and waves of his ashes and fire magic disturbing the clean smell of the place.

Shiro takes his time with him, almost making sure every part of Lance is where it is supposed to be, and undamaged. It is a relief worth every minute of frustration and unease, the feeling of Shiro sliding gently home, raw power hidden underneath his skin and hunger biting at his lips.

“Takashi,” he begs softly into the still air, using the name they so seldom pronounce, afraid of its power and effects. Shiro shudders, recognising it for what it is: a call to powers they don’t comprehend.

Predictably, Shiro leaves him depleted and aching, yet craving more. Keith is on the door, called in by the strong magic permeating the room. Lance wonders if he should call for his name too, but falls under thralls of sleep too fast to make up his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a mess because I wrote it in 5 hours after crying myself stupid. I needed an outlet and from now on I'm writing in this fandom out of spite only. Also just do me a solid and NEVER call an insecure friend dumb, I promise you it hurts even though we know perfectly well you're just joking - actually it makes you feel double dumb since we can't take a joke for what it is. So just don't.


	4. Trails and Rails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A walk in the park, dinner and a night together, with the wrong McClain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am late, I'm deeply sorry. I've been sick and overworking myself + there's the fringe festival here in Edinburgh so I spent a lot of my free time there too. I also don't especially like writing from Shiro's POV, it's too hard. Anyway this is DEFINITELY the second to last chapter. I can taste freedom, but then again I just got my voltron bingo card so I'm pretty excited about that too. So many ideas, so little time.

“I called in for you at work,” Keith tells him as he zips up his jeans. Lance nods, still too tired to move.

“You’re my boss, did you ring yourself?” he wonders, a lazy smile stretching on his lips.

“I called HR,” he answers. Lance sighs at his boyfriend’s lack of humour, when he hears Shiro’s padded steps come from the hallway of the building.

“Is he mad?” he asks Keith, and gets a glare in response. He bites his lower lip as Shiro steps go up the staircases – and he usually just takes the elevator, which means – Lance realises – that Shiro needs some more time alone.

“He might not be mad,” Keith ends up saying when Shiro is halfway up. He can’t hear, but Lance suspects he may know anyway, “but _I_ _am_ furious, Lance!”

So it begins, Lance considers silently. They’ve been good, staying away from serious arguments for almost six months, and here they are, arguing over Shiro all over again.

“Look, I don’t know what the hell you thought you were doing, _and I don’t care_ , but you can’t use life magic for spells, okay? It’s _against the law_!”

Keith is visibly trying not to shout. His lips are bitten raw already and yet he’s still torturing them. Lance is too tired to argue, and it’s not like he has any good argument. He was stupid and scared, and Shiro’s powers are off the charts – he wouldn’t miss much of his magic, especially while feeding.

“I’m sorry,” he tries, for the first time since he met Keith, just giving up.

“No, you’re not!” Keith says, eventually breaking his lip. The blood pours out and keys jingle out of the door. Keith mutters a “Fuck!” and hides in the ensuite, either to keep Shiro from seeing him hurting himself out of stress again, or to hide the fact that they were arguing behind his back.

Lance can’t help but think that sometimes their relationship is just a disaster and hiding things from each other never got them anything good in return.

Shiro enter the flat reeking of fresh sweat and the jumbled mess of street smells. Fresh bread from the bakery around the corner, dog fur, cat saliva, thick smog, hot coffee and people.

“I’m home!” he calls from the kitchen, the fridge opens, he drinks orange juice straight from the carton and the fridge closes. Felt tip on their whiteboard with the grocery list, the carton of juice that hits the bottom of the recycled rubbish.

“He didn’t even wash it,” Lance mutters to himself, and tries to get up. He’s too weak, he’ll have to wait for Shiro to come into the bedroom to scold him. Keith comes out of the ensuite, his shirt miraculously still clean. He’s put some soothing balm on his lips, from the smell of it. Lance is just glad he learnt which tube is the plumper and which one is the balm.

Although, that had been a fun time.

“We’re in the bedroom,” Keith calls and Shiro turns up a few seconds later. He’s visibly uncertain, but still greets Keith with a kiss on the corner of the healthy side of his lips.

“We were arguing,” Lance hears him say and clams a hand against his own mouth. He uses too much strength and can feel the slap burn his skin red. He doesn’t hiss in pain and doesn’t remove his hand, not wanting pity from either of them. He’s going to heal, he always does.

“It’s okay, no harm no foul,” Shiro says, and Keith blows a fuse.

“NO HARM?!” he shouts, turning red, teeth clamping down on his injured lip, the bleeding starts again, but he doesn’t seem concerned, as he adds: “You’re a demon and he’s not a practiser! He can’t just take your life and turn it into magic, he could kill himself, he could kill everyone in the neighbourhood!”

“Nothing we can do now, Keith,” Shiro never likes arguing, he tries his best every time to get out of confrontations and that never fails to make Keith even angrier. Lance has no idea how in so many years Shiro hasn’t learnt this lesson yet.

“Oh so we just brush it under the carpet, until next time, when we deal with mass murdering or suicide?! Perfect plan, A plus,” Keith barks, Shiro of course gets offended – he’s the man with a plan, he’s made his career on being good at strategizing – _of course_ Keith knows where to hit.

“Guys,” he tries, and they turn to him – Keith so furious he could burn a city down and Shiro annoyed and hurt – and their combined stares are a lot to digest. It’s stifling, he almost forgets he has to defuse the situation, but Keith opens his mouth to say something so he says the first thing he can think of, “I was scared!”

They both look at him with confusion evident in their features. He keeps talking, saying the truth because that’s what Shiro told them to do when they felt unsure about their relationship. If they know the problem, they can work on it together.

“I was terrified, and maybe I was too high on magic between the moonlight and Shiro, and I just wanted to call him by his name and I thought I can never keep you and the place safe and… I guess it all mixed up?” he wonders, looking at Keith, wondering how he did what he did.

“Magic is intent and belief,” he says, oddly placated.

“I helped you,” Shiro admits, and Keith is shocked and affronted. Shiro was a witch, he should know better.

“I’m sorry, I could feel –“ he sighs and sit down on his side of the bed, “I felt Lance terror and it did something to me,” he ends staring at his hands between his knees.

“You feed on sexual energy, not fear,” Keith informs him sceptically. Shiro shrugs it off, and Lance wonders what’s going on between them. He’s so tired, though, he doesn’t really care – and that doesn’t sit well with him. He should care. On any other occasion he would. He’s the one always taking care of his boyfriends even when they only want to be left alone. That’s who Lance is, and this empty feeling inside him is not something he’s ever known. Quite the opposite, he always cares too much.

Something is evidently wrong.

“Did you clean everything yesterday?” he wonders aloud, Keith’s eyes move from the shape of his legs underneath the covers up to his face.

“Yes, but it’s dust, it’s in the very air we breathe, I can’t do much about it without cleansing the whole place, and I don’t have time for that, I’m running late as it is,” Keith informs him and Lance sits up, excited.

“You know how in Peter Pan, Wendy and the other children fly,” he starts but Shiro interrupts him, the epiphany clear on his scarred face.

“They use fairy dust!” he finishes for Lance, and he gladly nods someone is getting what he’s trying to save, because, quite obviously, Keith looks lost and even more annoyed.

“The trick is to believe you can fly, then sprinkle fairy dust on yourself, and fly,” Lance explains, boosted by Shiro encouraging smile.

“Oh.”

Keith looks at them – his head doing this cute back and forth movement that is just too adorable - and realizes what must have happened. Lance, wanting to protect them and feel safe in his own home, Shiro, full of power and life to the brim, and pixie dust, a booster ingredient.

“We still don’t know why a pixie was here,” Shiro reminds him gently, without saying outwardly that he’s late for work, and he could be investigating on a serial killer, instead of thinking about a spell that didn’t go wrong.

“See you tonight,” he says, determination firing up his eyes. He tenderly kisses Lance on the cheek, while Shiro gets up to accompany him to the door.

Lance can hear them talk in soft voices, but tries to let the words wash over him without giving them meaning, he never wants to intrude in their privacy. The sound of the lilt Shiro’s voice takes when he’s teasing, the sweet rustling of clothes, gentle void words and the unmistakeable noise of a deep languid kiss, lull him back to sleep, a soft smile etched on his lips.

 

He wakes up around noon, Shiro notices as he gets ready to leave. Lance moans his displeasure at the rays of sunlight coming in from in between the blinds. He’s cute and sexy, still naked and reeking of sex even after the sponge bath and the thorough clean up Shiro gave him before letting him sleep off the moonlight high and the spell casting.

He’s not hungry, but his boyfriend is delectable. He’s a open bar of chocolate in the house, and Shiro’s never been good with chocolate in the house.

But he’s running late for work and his boyfriend will be home when he’ll be back. Sometimes. At some point in the future, which knowing Keith won’t be before thirty-six hours have gone by and he’ll be so tired he could maybe actually sleep for once.

It is hard to leave with just a goodbye and a chaste kiss, but he has to or he won’t get to the office at all.

He takes the underground because there’s no point in leaving the car in the employees’ parking lot when they have a garage underneath their building. He regrets it as soon as the doors of the train close.

It is quite incredible just how many people fantasize about sex in such a place, and yet that’s exactly what always happens. It isn’t as bad as when the fake BDSM book came out – that had been an awful time and he had refused to use public transports for months – but still people find commuting at noon (or any time, really) a good moment for fantasising about sex. It’s annoying, it just makes him miss his bar of chocolate more. And he has to see Keith and restrain from touching him for eons, until they solve the case. He’s seen the fire in his eyes that morning, there’s no way Shiro’s seeing any food for the next foreseeable future. Or until he manages to put the pixie in a jar and throw them in prison.

Somehow, he doesn’t see that happening so easily.

When he gets to the office, he finds it in a flurry of activity. Every officer is moving around arming themselves (or just chatting excitedly for those who have weapons incorporated in their very beings, like shifters).

“Good, you’re here,” Keith welcomes him, he’s not suiting up, and with him a couple younger officers and interns stand awkwardly to the side of the room.

“What’s going on?” he asks, Keith shrugs.

“Maximum back-up from drugs,” he explains, and Shiro acknowledges that the drugs division had been trying to tear down a brew ring for months. They must have managed somehow, but considering how many agents are heading out, they must have messed up, as usual. Shiro’s never liked dealing with that division, he’s definitely glad and not even a little bit guilty that it’s now on Keith.

“We’re still heading out, you, me and Veronica,” he says, as the officers quickly empty the room. There are five young officers and two interns left in the wake of the mobilisation.

Keith looks at them, face devoid of emotions, visibly making them uncomfortable, then goes back to the paperwork he’s been reading all along. The kids await for his signal as to what they’re supposed to be doing with themselves – and Shiro can’t help but coo on the inside for how cute it was of Keith to hand over his senior officers to save the kids from having to deal with the mess that is Drugs. They’re still all on edge because Keith can be responsible and clueless at the same time.

“Keith,” he calls his boyfriend surreptitiously and gets a distracted hum in reply, “you need to give them something to do,” he adds. Keith looks up at him, confused as he finally notices that the kids have been lingering.

“Do you want me to handle this?” Shiro offers after a few minutes of silence, the kids’ anxious and Keith stressed at realising he has no clue what they’re supposed to be doing. He’s only interfering because, knowing Keith, he’ll say something rude and the kids will forever be scared of him.

“Yes, please,” Keith agrees easily, with not a single trace of the relief he surely feels. Shiro is proud.

“Donovan, Wiśniewski, you have reports to write, I’ve been waiting for all sixteen of them,” he starts, the officers in question barely look chastised, but they do leave for their desks, “Jung, Qureshi, Hane: there are a few new cases from homicide that need looking over, and please make sure to submit the most promising to Iverson, even if you don’t finish today.”

The boys nod and move toward the table in the middle of the room where the office should be leaving the mails, but that has been repurposed to hold all cases from their human counterpart that need reviewing from Keith. The pile has been steadily growing for weeks and he can sympathise with the look of pure distress the kids are all wearing. He promises himself to give them a more active task as soon as possible. He also make a note to himself to either bribe o bully Keith to review those cases the kids are unsure about.

He’s going to be hard work until they solve this case, and Keith is not as easy to bribe as Lance. He sighs, and eyes the two interns. They’re hardworking, but one clearly has ADHD and the other is just a klutz. Not the best combination they’ve had by far, but they’re both sweet and caring – really interested in the work and most importantly the people. Still, he can see it is literal torture for them both to work on the archive for hours on end.

“Girls, you can take the day off or keep digitalising the archive,” It might not be the most ethical offer Shiro could have made, but he does believe they shouldn’t overwork the interns too, when they could be sparing them an afternoon. The girls shyly take him on the offer and he signs them off. Martinez trips on her own feet on her way out. Shiro despairs for them, he hopes he’ll be far from here when they come back graduated and handling guns.

“That’s illegal,” is the first thing Keith says to him when he joins him in his office. Veronica’s there too and greets him cheerfully.

“I distinctly remember a young officer using a confundus charm on an annoying reporter,” Veronica jokes and Keith scowls.

“It did get him off our backs, though, I can’t really complain,” Shiro adds, leaning against the desk, his shoulders to Keith.

“Oh yes, it did,” she agrees with an easy smile, “He sure was persistent with his alien theories!”

“He was trying to prove the existence of bigfoot through one of our cases,” Keith clarifies, still reading his stack of paper.

Veronica just smiles. Shiro asks about Lance’s family and she recounts the past full moon, with one of the pups changing for the first time and trying his luck at attacking a goose – which ended up chasing after him until the poor pup had been valiantly saved by his parent, but still spent the night whining and sticking close to his father’s hind legs.

Veronica, as one of the few humans in Lance’s family, has recorded a video too, and they spend the next ten minutes cooing and laughing at one of Lance’s nephews.

“When am I getting a niece or nephew from you guys?” She asks, making Keith grunt. Shiro just smiles and shrugs. At some point, he guesses, but not yet.

“So, basically, I worked on a map of all the crime scenes,” Keith says and shows them a map of the city, with red crosses united by a blue circle.

“I bet your pixie is somewhere there,” Veronica points to the park on the southern side of the ring. Keith hums and marks that with a black circle.

They tell Veronica what Lance remembered of his encounter and, although she looks upset, she agrees they should also take a look at the park closest to his place, where Shiro goes running every morning he’s not working.

It’s unsettling, but at the same time the chances of finding anything are quite low.

They get to Athol Park by car, Veronica and Shiro taking a cruiser, while Keith precedes them on his bike.

The park is huge. It extends around an artificial hill quite loved for his easy hiking trails for tourists and tracks and circuits for runners. The vegetation itself is quite wild in a very man-made and controlled growth, secular trees provide shade during summer while easily surrounded by bushes and beds of flowers that define the tracks and trails. It is not inhabited, except for nasty squirrels, many birds and insects.

Shiro has never been there, while Veronica seems to know her way around into the forest. They follow a trail for a while, none of his supernatural senses recognising anything odd with the peace surrounding them. A few birds happily sing in the branches over their heads, a couple of teenagers left the trail at some point to mess around with each other on their left and the squirrels sometimes eye them menacingly, possibly trying to gauge their intentions towards their stashes of food for winter.

Shiro hasn’t been on a nice walk in the woods for quite a long time, and he makes a mental note to take his boyfriends out to the preserve just on the outskirts of town next time they can synchronise their schedules to have their off day on the same day.

Keith is silent, feeling the shift of the air around them for any odd chill, and while his race has nothing to do with death, Shiro is pretty sure there hasn’t even been a death in this woods.

“This is a bust,” Veronica says after a whole afternoon spent wondering around aimlessly. She and Keith are tired and cranky, visibly disappointed.

“Should we wait for sundown?” he wonders. He can’t see the sun, they’re in too deep, but he guesses it’s not too far. Veronica shrugs, Keith seems conflicted.

“There’s no point,” he finally says, “Pixie dust sticks to everything, we even left the trail and there’s no trace of it anywhere.”

They trudge back to the entry archway without delay. It takes longer than Shiro would’ve believed, but not unreasonably so. They don’t linger in the parking lot, but they take a detour for dinner. Keith tries hi best to sneak a salted caramel cheesecake slice in their order, but he’s outnumbered – and Lance isn’t there to spoil him and ruin his health.

They eat in Keith’s office, neither of them trying for conversation. Keith should’ve gone home already and yet no one mentions it.

“Pixies don’t like to feel cornered,” Veronica says when they’re done eating and Shiro is still hungry for something else. At times like these he feels fifteen all over again, head in his gutter and struggling to keep thoughts of sex out of his business.

“We have to act quick, you said, yes,” Keith answers, he’s still looking at the map while sipping from a smoothie Shiro got him to make it up for dessert.

“That’s not where I was going,” she frowns at him. Keith finally looks up.

“Look, I appreciate you helping out, I do,” Keith starts, biting his lip, Veronica holds up a hand. Shiro would like to believe Keith wasn’t just about to dismiss the only expert on Fae species they have, but he also knows him like the back of his palm and thank God Veronica’s a relative of Lance and they all like Keith.

“Pixies are pretty independent and young, you corner them, they flee,” Veronica says, fingers beating a rhythm on her thigh, “but this pixie hasn’t. You’ve been after them for a while and they even visited you,” she goes on, not looking at them, “I don’t think we’re dealing with your average textbook pixie.”

“You mean we have no idea what we’re looking for?” Shiro wonders aloud, but she shakes her head.

“I think there’s a reason that’s keeping them from running.”

 

They brainstorm until three in the morning. Veronica stays, Lance calls. He doesn’t come around but spends a couple hours helping them out. He remembers of an old lady taking care of a pixie from his childhood and Veronica does too, but neither of them had actually saw the pixie, and either way it wouldn’t help them solve the case.

Lance says goodnight while whining at Keith, complaining he’s stealing his boyfriend from him. Shiro knows he means Keith, since he had a night shift while Keith was supposed to be home with Lance. They’re cute, but Shiro wishes Keith would not leave lance on his own, even though the house’s been warded with Shiro’s life magic – and nothing’s more powerful than a demon’s true nature.

“Do they only live in woods?” Keith wonders, still pouring over the maps.

Veronica shakes her head, “Moors, country houses, caves… but they like to wander and bring mischief in people’s life.”

“So, say, would they live in underground tunnels?” Keith ponders.

“Yes?” Veronica gets up, abandoning her research to look at the maps Keith’s been confronting.

“Abandoned tunnel from last century, it’s closed off,” he says, pointing to a ring of the underground grown old when the train had been changed from rails to hovering and the tunnels had become obsolete.

“That’s so cliché,” she comments with an inflection that’s so Lance it almost hurts.

“They do like jokes,” Keith mutters, but Shiro’s still looking at the rail map.

“There’s a tunnel under Alder’s park,” he points out.

“That’s right next to your place!” Veronica cries, and they’re out of the office faster than ever before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, please let me know what you think of this chapter. I live off feedback.


	5. Pixie Acid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not dead, find my excuses and apologies in the end notes~

There isn’t much to say about their house, Lance thinks, as he overlooks the living room. He’s always been tidy, while his lovers both came from a military background – and while Shiro liked knick-knacks and sometimes indulged himself by buying some, Keith was a Spartan child by vocation, all the while remaining the messier of the triad. He didn’t own many personal effects, or clothes, but he did collect weapons and witch paraphernalia – and maybe Lance is being salty, because it isn’t paraphernalia if Keith actually needs it to practice, right? Anyway, Keith is a mess and he never checks for expiration dates of his stuff, and this is why Lance has to stick his sensitive nose inside his smelly things so that he can clean up and avoid some toxic waste killing them all by accident.

Therefore, if there’s something Lance truly hates about cleaning, that’s taking out the trash. Usually because he’s the only one that does it, since his boyfriends are forgetful idiots with a blessedly less sensitive nose.

He’s tried to train them to stick to a routine but with their shifts and their hectic lives they just keep forgetting. It’s annoying and Lance’s greatest pet peeve that may or may not be brought up during every single lovers’ quarrel they have. It’s up there with Keith’s ethical issues and Shiro’s draining needs.

He’s pretty used to it by now anyway and even the annoyance has become an habit (one he’s not willing to break), and it comes with no surprise that the tingly smell that has been assaulting Lance’s senses since he woke up is in fact wafting out of Keith’s magic cabinet.

He gets up and drags himself to it, dreading his future encounter with whatever Keith forgot to throw out, be it dead fish eyeballs or hallucinogenic mushrooms.

He spends the next quarter of an hour sifting through disgusting jars – running a steady commentary on his findings that range from “bull’s testicles, Keith, really?” to more terrified “I am so dumping you,” – when he finally finds a jar full of moulds. He can’t recognise its original content and he has to swallow down his gag instinct before he manages to throw it in an evidence bag and zip it close.

He finishes going through the cabinet and writes down whatever is expired so that Keith can repurchase it and eventually he’s holding a full black bag of disgusting witch things and their usual waste. He doesn’t even change out of his track pants and Keith’s tank and Shiro’s apron – why does he even own an apron when he sucks at cooking? – and he doesn’t even attempt the stairs, his nose twitching uncomfortably every time he moves the bag.

Mr. Carlton gets on the elevator a couple floors from ground floor and they chat a bit about the new condo rules and the request from the administrator for more money to fix a nasty break in the sewers’ conducts. They say goodbye with Lance offering to take care of Mr. Carlton werewolf nephew on the weekend.

Lance has no clue how he always falls for babysitting duties, but he bets it has something to do with feeling lonely without a huge pack full of barking little monsters – especially this close to the full moon. Keith is going to throw another fit over it, but Lance is already looking forward to playing with the pup.

The garbage disposal room smells awful and Lance empties the bag in the correct bin as fast he super-humanly can. This is the part he hates the most.

He’s so focused on making sure nothing unsafe has spilt out that he doesn’t at first notice the eerily creepy wind coming from behind him. It takes a while before he realises his annoyance I born out of the frantic need to run away.

The moment he realises he’s terrified, is also the moment an unbearable pain hits his head and the world turns black and silent.

He never hits the floor.

\---- *** ----

Lance is not in their flat.

The only sign of his whereabouts is the sticky note on the cabinet he’s not supposed to touch. Keith doesn’t know if he’s angrier at Lance throwing out some perfectly good, unbelievably expensive pixie wings or at Lance just leaving their home after being attacked once already.

The result hardly changes: he can’t focus on the tracking spell. Veronica has called in her pack and Shiro is pacing around the place, at times sniffling around, as if he could catch Lance’s freshest smell in the middle of their home.

They’re waiting for one of Lance’s siblings or cousins, as Shiro’s nose is basically worthless – unless Lance got horny while sifting through Keith’s stuff.

“The door of the bin store is still open,” Veronica says, stepping into the room. She lifts an elegant brow at Keith’s circle and pendulum, while she completely avoids looking at Shiro trying to keep his human shape as stable as possible. He’s failing miserably but Keith doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s glitching out of shape every six steps.

“The dumbass!”

Keith growls and he’s out of the door, he hears Veronica follow him and Shiro just give up on self-restraining in favour of teleporting downstairs.

Keith and Veronica are slowly descending in the elevator when Shiro reappears, all fangs and bright yellow eyes.

“It stinks,” he grumbles uneasily around his fangs. His black skin fumes out of existence in parts, his metallic arm hangs limply at his side. Keith is at once fascinated and worried.

“Well, it is a garbage disposal unit,” Veronica tries. Shiro looks her over and Keith surreptitiously finds his favourite blade. Shiro notices and grins sardonically at him but doesn’t harm Veronica.

“It stinks of pixie magic,” Shiro explains. Keith is too strung up to let himself swear aloud, but Veronica is apparently not. She says something in Spanish that makes Shiro bubble up in malicious laughter.

It’s unnerving. He knows Shiro – no,  _ Kuro _ – is abnormally possessive of them: he’s never kept it a secret what he’d like to do to Lance’s pack if only he could. For some mysterious reason, the demon has aligned the idea of pack with that of ownership and man, does he not like sharing. Sometimes Keith is happy he has no family to worry about – except that the McClain’s pack has become the closest thing to family he has.

“Did you get anything else?” he asks instead. Kuro looks at him and flickers for a second. Shiro doesn’t get him under control but when he returns stable the demon is mellower than before. He shakes his head and bites his black lip with one of his sharp fangs. It’s sexy as hell and Keith has to breathe deeply not to fall into his boyfriend’s trap.

“Just one of them, curious fella,” he says, his fangs glinting under the sterile light of the elevator. Veronica sighs loudly. Keith can’t help but agree, it is just a Lance thing. His boyfriend has a knack for getting into troublesome situation just  _ because _ .

“Well, I guess it can’t be helped, then,” she says, her speech impeded by her nail biting bad habit.

Kuro bristles in anger, but doesn’t reply.

Keith has learned to cherish small victories, and so he does.

\--

It’s dark and smelly and what wakes him up is definitely the wave of nausea that turns into dry heaving before he’s even conscious.

His survival instinct is screeching at giving away his only chance at surprising his captors by alerting them of having woken up, but it can’t be helped. He’s puking his guts out before he can rationalise where he is at all.

A tiny pixie rushes to his aid, holding a bucket twice its size. Lance would coo at it any other time. Right then he takes the bucket and painfully empties his stomach of his acids – the smell so foul that tears stream down his face and he gags more.

The tiny pixie is not helping, fluttering around in front of him, giving him motion sickness to boot.

When he finally stops gagging and heaving, he realises he’s free to move. He can’t see much around, the contrast between pitch black darkness and bright orange light surrounding the pixie impeding his sight, but he can’t feel any weight on him. There’s no rope, manacles or collar on him.

The pixie makes a sweet cooing sound and moves closer, so fast that Lance can’t react. It’s in his space and rubbing its minuscule cheek against Lance’s in no time – and when he does react by stepping back, the pixie emits a small heartbroken trill, making Lance feel like the villain.

He stares at the thing that it’s fluttering its baby wings like a particularly bright hummingbird. The pixie has a face, a human face, looking precisely like a baby’s, and even its body is pudgy and fat like a baby’s. It’s creepy, just because Lance is pretty sure that’s not what a Pixie’s supposed to look like.

The creature is still trilling in discontent at him and Lance heaves an extremely loud sigh. He’s not old enough for this, but he has years of schooling riotous werebabies and he is unleashing that experience on the unaware pixie for sure.

“You’re not getting cuddles if you don’t tell me what’s going on,” he states and the Pixie visibly deflates, losing altitude in a cute and overdramatic show of sadness, “are we clear?” he enforces, but smiles in encouragement when the pixie nods.

He stands with some difficulties with his balance, his head heavier than usual and his guts still cramping on themselves. For some reason his brain is surprised there’s no tail to help balance him, so it takes a little fumbling before Lance can walk without stumbling.

The Pixie hovers around with worried coos and even an overly loud trill that one time Lance ends up almost face first against a wall he could not see.

“Okay, fine, you lead,” he tells the pixie, which happily flutters in front of him to light up the way.

They walk together for what feels like ages, the pixie bubbling nonsense excitedly, putting a tired smile on Lance’s lips, a bittersweet memory of cuddling with his nephews and nieces and younger cousins when he still was part of the McClain’s pack. The pang of emotional pain is sudden, but well known. Lance is packless – has been for months, but has kept it from his lovers, answering with vague excuses every time they happened to wonder why he wasn’t at pack meetings. Luckily, Keith never really connects the dots of social clues, and Shiro is secretly pleased – the guilt might be enough that he’s unaware of Lance’s change of social status.

Or maybe the need for physical affection that Lance has been turning into sexual hunger has obfuscated Shiro’s mind. It’s debatable, but Lance has managed to keep both his lovers in the dark of his gradual detachment from his birth pack. Half of the pack hasn’t noticed yet that the bond is breaking, after all.

So the bubbly pixie reminds him of times when Uncle Lance was part of the pack and not just the lone wolf that smells of a witch and a demon, gunfire, metal and subtle cologne.

The pixie turns around and stops the wing fluttering – Lance acts on autopilot, catching it before it even falls. It snuggles close into his chest and points forward with one fat hand. It only has four fingers, Lance distractedly notices.

“If you wanted to be carried you could’ve said so, you know?”

The pixie pouts for a handful of seconds, then goes back to talk in baby speech and even blows a couple bubbles. Saliva ends up on Lance’s arm and it stings. Neither seems to mind.

Lance smells the fresher air before he sees the light at the end of what appears to be an actual tunnel. There’s something ironical about it, but Lance can’t properly grasp the joke. He suspects he’s the butt of it anyway.

The proverbial other side proves to be quite not what Lance was expecting. The tunnel opens on a huge field of juniberry flowers gently swaying in the breeze, the sun shines bright up in the sky not a cloud in sight, the salty smell of ocean lingers everywhere and there’s a peace that can only be described as otherworldly.

It feels like stepping into a dream, and just by breathing deeply once his body relaxes. No gut cramps, no fuzzy heavy head, no heartache. Everything just clicks the way Lance has always wanted his life to be.

He’s been around witches and demons long enough to recognise an illusion for what it truly is. He sighs, ready to step back and leave this paradise, but when he turns, the juniberry field keeps going and going, indefinitely, until it meets the horizon.

The pixie in his arms gurgles happily and Lance thinks – maybe, just maybe, he can be happy for just a minute longer.

 

\--

From their bin store, the sewers twist and turn, somehow winding up right underneath the old tunnel below Alder’s Park. 

Of course there’s a leak from the sewers to the tunnel - and Kuro is one-hundred percent suing the municipality for not using their taxes on maintenance on the city sewerage - so it doesn’t take a werewolf’s nose to point them toward the right way.

The werewolf does confirm that Lance puked his guts in a bucket left at the connecting point between sewer and tunnel. Lance’s brother’s nose is useless from then on because of the stench. They walk in shit for a while, until they notice a cleaner part of the tunnel, so they trudge back on a shitless path. Keith’s glowing orb is useful, but Kuro would’ve preferred not seeing what they are stepping on. He might be the spawn of evil, but he likes being clean and perfumed, thank you very much.

He watches Keith trudge on with fury etched in his few wrinkles and he can already taste the angry sex that will happen once they bring Lance back to them. He wants to be positive and sticks to thinking that Lance will be in one piece and just slightly more traumatised than before. Cop life is tremendously fun, after all, and they’ve all gotten their nightmares to come alive at some point.

Lance’s siblings are walking behind them, not trusting him to watch their backs (wise) or Keith not to trample all over their dead bodies in his mad quest to strangle his boyfriend himself. Kuro doesn’t like them, even though Shiro adores them and he’s so soft for them, it’s  _ disgusting _ . Kuro wants them gone only slightly less than he wants Lance back. 

Mostly, Kuro hates thinking - the Shadows know Shiro does enough thinking for both of them - but what’s there to do when you’re walking in tunnels as disgusting as sewers? And he’s trying hard not to think about Lance and all the pictures of disemboweled humans he’s collected for the case. 

He might even make Lance retire after this stunt. He’s going to get them a baby or seven and convince Lance he’s the only one qualified for the full time job so Lance will send in his retirement letter and he can finally live in peace. No more werewolf in distress drama, no more lonely feeling wafting from his lover… he can starve to death if his lovers are happy and healthy.

Shiro is also, maybe, reaching that mortal age in which he’s pining after every kid he sees around and wants his own but he still forbids himself from talking with his partners under the assumption that they’re both younger and ‘not interested’. Of course Shiro hasn’t been listening to Kuro when he tells him Lance is lonely without werebabies and Keith has been pulling away from them because he  _ wants _ but he’s too scared to acknowledge his feelings and needs. 

“We should adopt a pup,” he states and Lance’s siblings look at him like he’s gone mad - that’s dumb, he’s always insane - but Keith growls, “Not now.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” he answers and Keith stops dead in his tracks.

“Have you been on the internet again?” he wonders aloud, looking back from behind his shoulder. Kuro shrugs. Shiro’s been looking up cookies recipes to try, so it does count as the internet.

“We already have a dog,” Keith says, earning a low growl from Lance’s brother. Kuro snickers, but lets it go. He’ll bully Shiro into talking about his feelings. They’re weakest for Shiro’s feelings. 

Meanwhile, the tunnel goes on and on, and seems to never end. It’s marginally less smelly and at some point either it become lighter or Kuro’s eyes adapted to the darkness - or Keith has started fueling his glowing orb with rage - but he can see farther than before. 

It’s also warmer, he realises, and he’s therefore not too surprised when they eventually reach a sort of camp with a few foxfires giving an eerie magical look the cave on the side of the tunnel.

On many cots lie women, eyes wide open. Some are deadly thin and Kuro could bet his remaining arm that they weren’t so before arriving. The putrid smell is a dead giveaway to the state of abandonment the women are in.

“Oh God,” whines the werewolf as he takes a step back, holding his nose between his thumb and index finger. Kuro almost comments on the fact that this place hasn’t seen any God for a long time, when he notices Keith go stiff.

There’s a short tension to his body before Keith startles into a run and almost stumbles on a woman lying on the ground. When Kuro looks at Keith’s destination, he recognises the fluffy hair peeking out from a filthy threadbare blanket.

He teleports, and appears right next to Keith, who’s holding Lance in his arms. 

Lance’s eyes are unseeing. He stares vacantly, his eyes glazed over with a thin sheen of milky white substance. 

“Can you reverse it?” Veronica surprises them from behind. Kuro hisses, but Keith’s strangled whine takes his attention so fast he forgets he was almost ripping her face in two. 

“Keith, do you know the spell?” She asks again, gently, and Keith’s breath falters. He looks as broken as Lance should - but there’s a smile on Lance’s lips and tears tracks on his cheeks, a pleased scent wafts idly from him. Kuro doesn’t realise he’s nosing Lance’s neck until Keith eventually speaks.

“He’s overdosing on pixie tears,” he mumbles and looks up to Veronica, not knowing what to do. Kuro’s heart breaks for him, and he finally feels Shiro trying to take back their body, determined to say something.

He lets go of it, unable to assist his lover’s breakdown in any way.

 

When Shiro opens his stormy grey eyes, Keith is looking at him like he’s a lost kid in the supermarket. 

“Took you long enough,” he mutters and Shiro smiles, closing in on Lance and taking off his sweater. There’s an acid burn on his arm that wasn’t there that morning, and a trail of tiny ant-like bites on his forearms.

“I don’t think it was Pixie tears,” he tells Keith, the opening starting to rev up his brain into analysing more correctly the scene of crime in front of them.

“Pixie acid, from the source, lowered his willpower and inhibitions.” He muttered to himself, his hands reverently tracing Lance’s forearms.

“Fifty people in here, all in different state of starvation,” he adds, looking around, but his eyes go quickly back to Lance, “Lost in an illusion.”

“The milky white substance on his eyes,” Shiro points out to Veronica and Luis, “is the most classical human reaction to pixie acid.” Keith nods, taking Lance’s hand in his, tenderly drawing circles on his dirty skin.

“Pixie acid, in diluted forms, is frequently used as a pain reliever for terminal patients,” Shiro explains, his eyes never leaving Lance’s.

“It’s in some pretty expensive diet pills too, right?” Veronica asks, and Keith grunts in answer.

“Yes, it makes so you don’t feel hunger,” Shiro agrees, Veronica looks around the room and her nose scrunches up in distaste the same way Lance’s do.

“You don’t feel anything at all,” Keith points out, and pinches Lance pretty harshly. Lance doesn’t move, his face doesn’t change from the blissed out expression he’s had from the beginning.

“Keith,” Shiro reprimands him. He can’t add anything else because an orange light flies into the cave.

“It’s mad,” Luis says, taking a step back and hitting the wall. The Pixie shrieks and launches against them, Keith and Shiro standing up to fight it off, but it’s Veronica that grabs her baton and hits it. 

The pixie goes down shrieking even louder but by the time it manages to take off the ground in its true form - not a baby but the ugly lovechild of a fairy and a gremlin - Shiro’s left his body to Kuro, who’s smoked out in the room surrounding them all in darkness and malice. 

The Pixie recognises too late its mistake, when Kuro’s already entrapped her in a cage of smoke, his bloodlust only controlled by Keith’s painful grip on his human arm. 

“What are we going to do with you, little parasite?” Kuro wonders, his voice sinisterly echoing in the cave, sending a chill down everyone’s back. Even Lance and some of the women stirs in their cots.

“We’re arresting it, Kuro,” Keith commands and for a split second in which the makeshift cage tightens on its captive, Kuro contemplates disobeying and making the little being pay for what it’s done to his boyfriend, but eventually retreats into Shiro’s body and takes with him his ominous aura with him. 

The cage stays and Shiro is visibly pained, but endures. Luis takes Lance in his arms effortlessly and they start their walk back to the nearest underground station, way closer than making their way back up through the sewers, as Veronica points out.

Keith calls in backup and as many ambulances as the nearest hospitals can spare. In less than an hour the underground is closed and the cave is swarming with EMTs and policemen, while the Pixie is put into a glass cage enchanted to recycle air.

Lance doesn’t wake up. 

 

\--

The Pixie, as a non-sentient being, cannot be processed, so Keith and Shiro spend their days and nights pouring over the case with enough lawyers to find a way to put it behind bars. In jail or a zoo, neither care at that point.

The Lawyers apparently care, someone even taking out some 1875 pixies rights chart that never found any validation, and the public cares when ‘accidentally’ said chart ends up in some reporter’s dirty paws. It all drags on and Keith tends to lose his temper more than when he was a teenager, making everything worse for himself and Shiro, who still has to clear the airs for the newly appointed captain - Keith’s been appointed almost an year before, so he feels entitled to point it out every time an article tries to belittle his skills as a detective and as captain. Shiro’s given up trying to explain that it just doesn’t matter to journalists.

A few women die in the hospital, and the case gets even higher profile than it was before. Press gets harsher and Keith spends a whole morning in Lance’s hospital room, not even allowing his family to visit him until the nurses literally throw him out on the street. 

Lance doesn’t wake up and Keith is on the verge of breaking down - and Shiro does what he can to mend things up, while he ignores the hunger pains. Keith notices, they have sex one evening, they both struggle with guilt, Keith eventually breaks down in tears and Shiro’s just as hungry than before. He also feels like the worst boyfriend ever, for craving sex while one of his boyfriend’s in a coma and the other is slowly descending into stress-madness.

He talks to Lance about it a lot. Not about wanting sex, mostly about missing him and feeling inadequate. It’s always been easy, talking to Lance. They’ve less baggage, probably, and talking just comes easier to Shiro when there’s a chatterbox in front of him.

Lance isn’t speaking now, but Shiro still recounts their abysmal try at sex and Keith’s tears. He’s got his face buried in his hands when he hears it:

“I sleep for a couple hours and you guys fuck up sex, unbeliavable.”

Shiro shouts so loud a whole platoon of nurses rushes into the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the only 'chapter' left is the epilogue with, much awaited (by me), porn.   
> I'm sorry it took so long for this final chapter, but I've spent the past months spiralling into a state of shitty self-worth, envy and competition. So if the chapter sounds off it's because I started it, deleted it, recovered it, deleted part of it again... just because I was feeling awfully about my writing. I eventually finished it today and I'm not touching it any longer. I'm so tired and deeply sorry that this took so long and it's nowhere near past chapters' level.   
> Thank you for supporting me, I hope you're not (too) disappointed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd like to hear opinions on this, I'm pretty insecure and I'd love some feedback to make this story better!


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